Any movement that celebrates diversity, highlights the cause of the historically marginalized and fights for social justice derserves unstinted supported.

BLM is one of the pivotal such movements of our time.

But maybe it’s time to reimagine it. Here's why:

The essential purpose of such a movement is inclusion in society on an equal basis with others.

Social patterns, though, are hard to change.

So equal inclusion requires a transitional phase of struggle against discrimination. And in that long process, what begins as a movement for inclusion inevitably hardens into group identities that become oppositional. Struggle is always invigorated by envisioning an enemy group.

And then the struggle for rights usually turns into a demand for privileged treatment.

The emergence of a newly influential group, with support from the mainstream media, big corporations, and politicians on the left, has led to anxiety for the less educated and the less successful among the majority whites. They see such most-favoured groups cornering a bigger pie of benefits, weakening their own claim to assistance.

Then there is the moral superiority claimed by such movements on basis of their distinctive concern. This comes as another affront on top of the loss of meaningful jobs, fewer opportunities, and stagnating incomes for the struggling white working class.

The resultant anger, anxiety and despair have shredded people’s political allegiances resulting in a loss of faith in the existing political system. Hence the yearning for the good old days, and populists filling up the political vacuum.

The guiding philosophy for social justice movements so far has been the John Rawls principle that a society should be judged moral according to whether its laws were designed for the benefit of the most disadvantaged groups.

Rawlsianism has its limits. A path of promoting shared identity, reciprocal obligations and enlightened self-interest may yield better long term results than narratives of victimhood.